Crypto Friday - What’s Up This Week?
Crypto Friday - What’s Up This Week?
Hey DEFI WORLD community,
There is no boring week in crypto. You never know what is about to happen. This week was no exception. What was so special?
Last Wednesday, we had the first Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. As expected, Trump attacked Biden verbally quite often, and therefore Biden had to take the defensive part. All in all, not many facts were discussed and there weren’t many things people could really take away from the discussion.
The stock markets reacted quite harshly to this and took a hit. But there is one remarkable thing: Bitcoin and the overall crypto markets didn’t. Instead, Bitcoin continued to climb over the following days. What’s happening?
People are starting to realize that the old system needs to change. That’s why they prefer to opt-out and buy Bitcoin. Bitcoin means freedom. Bitcoin means that nobody will be able to print money freely and dilute your savings anymore. Bitcoin means self-sovereignty.
Read on to see the most significant news this week! See you all on Sunday. We will be sharing our thoughts about the next big thing in DeFi: NFTs!
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LEND → Aave migration
The migration of the Aave token is official now and it happened today at around 8:40 UTC, block 10978863. Follow @lemiscate on Twitter to receive regular updates about everything that is happening.
If you are a $LEND token holder, chances are you will probably love the new tokenomics because they are awesome! =)
EMN Disaster
On Wednesday, Andre Cronje, developer of the Yearn Finance protocol, released a test version of a new protocol on the Ethereum blockchain. Many DeFi veterans instantly noticed this and put around $15 million into the unaudited and UNOFFICIAL smart contracts!
But then a horrible thing happened: A flash loan exploited a weakness in the smart contracts and the hacker was able to steal over $15 million of deposited funds.
Interestingly, the hacker sent around $8 million to the Yearn Finance treasury. Even though the contracts were exploited EMN looks like a project to keep an eye on. But wait until the project is officially released and audited.
yTrump/nTrump
These are tokens, powered by the Augur prediction markets, with which you can bet on the outcome of the presidential election. YTrump is a token that will reach $1 if Trump wins the election, nTrump is going to settle at $1 if Trump loses the election.
Will you speculate on the outcome of the election? If yes, this is your chance now!
KuCoin Hack
Last weekend, KuCoin, which is a big centralized crypto exchange, was hacked. The hacker stole over $150 million worth of funds.
Many projects reacted to this and froze the stolen funds: USDT, VELO, VIDT, and some more. This is possible because these projects are rather centralized. Take USDT for example. One Tether is nothing more than an IOU. You hand 1 Dollar to Bitfinex and Bitfinex gives you the equivalent amount of Tether.
But because Bitfinex is a centralized issuer, it will always be able to control your funds. This is how Bitfinex froze the hacker’s funds, minted new Tether, and gave it to KuCoin.
Our take from this: Tether is not trustless money. Bitcoin and Ether is. If your bitcoins or Ether are stolen, nobody is going to give them back to you because nobody has the power to do so.
This is why we are in crypto. To take back control of our funds.
Synthetix is on Optimism Testnet
Synthetix is now officially on the Optimism test net, which is a L2 solution on the Ethereum blockchain. Read all about it here.
CFTC Sues BitMex
The CFTC has sued BitMex founder Arthur Hayes to “to enjoin their ongoing illegal offering of commodity derivatives to U.S. persons, their acceptance of funds to margin derivatives transactions from individuals and entities in the U.S., & their operation of a derivatives trading platform”.
The CFTC claims that BitMex has collected over $1b through derivatives trading. The markets reacted quite harshly to this and took a deep dive on Thursday.
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.